Alt Tab not always in front? RC 7100

[Cheami90]

When Alt Tabing, the bar to display the active windows hides when aero previews the window thats open. When I mean hide, I mean it doesn't stay in the front, but rather the window preview covers the bar. Any way to change that?

 

[garysgold]

Hello Cheami90,

Welcome to Seven Forums.

I am not having this problem and can't reproduce it. You could use the windows key+tab to go through the windows. Maybe someone else is seeing this or has a fix.

Gary

 

[lschult2]

Alt-tab frustrations

Hello,

I'm having the same issues with Alt-Tab. The list of icons for the open windows disappears when a window is previewed. It's very disorienting. Is there any way to keep the Alt-Tab icons in front?

 

[MacGyvr]

I'm unable to reproduce this. Does every window cover the alt-tab bar or just certain ones?

 

[lschult2]

The issue shows up when I pause on a icon while alt-tabbing. Then the Peek takes over and brings the window to the foreground covering up the icons. If I continue to tab, it stays in Peek mode, and all windows cover up the icons.

 

[Panico]

Hello there from Italy.

I have the same issue, in fact for patching it temporarily I'm changing in the registry the time Aero pops up.
How to Adjust Aero Peek Desktop Preview Mouse Hover Delay in Windows 7 - The Winhelponline Blog
I've configured two Windows 7 right now on two different computer and I always get this issue.

I've changed some things on the application bar: I use small icons, my application bar hides automatically and I've doubled its height.
I'm on Windows 7 64bit

I have no other clues to help you to reproduce this bug... and however yes.. it is very annoying.

Thanks

 

[Panico]

Funny thing!
When I wrote my previous post I've said that I have patched it temporarily by changing in the registry the time Aero pops up.

At that time I still had to reboot.

Now it seems that by adding "DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime" dword to the registry, it fixed the issue!

Try it and let me know if it worked for you too.


*Bad news*
It seemed to work but after some time it stop to work again.

 

[lschult2]

This DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime does not affect the Alt-Tab functionality for me. The time to Peek when putting my cursor in the lower right is affected. But when I Alt-Tab and pause on an icon, the peek comes up right away covering up the Alt-Tab icon box....

 

[ShmadamD]

Panico,
I had the same thing happen when I added the DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime dword. I rebooted and, for about 5 minutes, my alt tab window stayed on top. Then, went back to old behavior. I've looked everywhere for a solution to this very annoying problem and can't find anything. When loading Windows 7, I did an upgrade. A coworker did a full install and does not have this problem. Is this related to some settings that got inherited from Vista?

 

[lschult2]

Wierd. It's now working as I expect. When I Alt-Tab and pause, the icons stay in front as the Peek shows the windows underneath. I like it. But I have no idea why it's changed behavior.

I did add the DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime. Then I removed it. Then recently my system froze up, and i had to force a power off and reboot. Now that Alt-Tab behavior had changed, and I'm not sure why.

 

[ShmadamD]

Ok. Tried playing around with the "DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime" settings. Here's what I found. If I change the setting to change the time, when I reboot, I get the behavior I expect from alt tab, that is, the alt tab window stays in front and, as I switch windows, the highlighted window will Peek.
It stays this way for maybe 30 seconds, then, goes back to the old behavior where the alt tab window fades to the back.
Obviously, this behavior is somehow related to Desktop Hover Time registry entry. Any other help would be muchly appreciated.

 

[lschult2]

Now I am reporting some more strange behavior. I reported to you all yesterday that it is now working as expected with the icons staying on top, but not due to anything I did. Then later that day, I noticed the behavior reverted to the undesirable behavior where the icons were hidden behind the Peek window. Now it's reverted back again to the correct behavior. There have been no reboots, logouts, or registry changes during this period.

There seems to be some randomness to the behavior.

 

[ShmadamD]

Fixed (I think)

I noticed that I did not have the Alt-Tab problem if I logged in with a different account. I logged in as an admin and deleted my profile (My Computer|Properties|Advanced System Settings|User Profiles|Settings). I logged back in and don't have the alt-tab problem anymore. You will end up losing a lot of your settings and don't forget to back up your desktop and Favorites, but, it works.
I would like to hear if this fixes the problem for anyone else.